Goofing Off & Going Tribal

Wednesday (way back on January 10th - it's taking me a while to get these things written) was our rest day for the week we were at Disney. We did a rest day mid-way through our last Disney trip and it was so great; it's nice to just sleep in, relax, take advantage of the things your resort and the surrounding resorts have to offer and just be chill. It was especially nice for me because my cold hit it's peak from late Tuesday - early Wednesday.

We were able to sleep in and then we caught a bus over to Hollywood Studios, so we could in turn catch a bus over to the Boardwalk for breakfast at Tratorria al Forno.

The Bon Voyage Character Breakfast is...a character breakfast (I bet you'd have never guessed) and allows you to meet Prince Eric and Ariel, as well as Rapunzel and Flynn Ryder. The food is fun and themed appropriately to the characters that are making their way around the room throughout your meal.

 

The meal starts with a cast iron skillet (Rapunzel's weapon of choice) filled with tasty pastries themed to the films Tangled and The Little Mermaid. I narrowly avoided Lindsey's attempt to clock me on the head with the empty cast iron skillet once we'd split all the pastries... I'm kidding. I don't think she'd really hit me. I had the tower of pancakes for my meal and they were tasty; oh so tasty. My mouth is watering looking at the pictures!

  

 

Flynn arrived at our table and immediately turned the topic of conversation to the terrible wanted flyers that just simply couldn't get his nose right! When the time came for a photo, he turn on the smolder! Rapunzel promised that she'd have Pascal whip us up some conditioner for our hair...and on the subject of all things hair related, Ariel said we'd obviously used our dingle hoppers to fix our hair because it looked lovely. Eric was concerned that we'd faced rough seas on our voyage to breakfast - but we assured him we hadn't.

After the eating and character greeting were completed, my family perused the Boardwalk and Beach Club resorts but I found an Adirondack chair with a view of the dock and simply sat. It's safe to say I wasn't feeling so hot at that moment in time - and once we'd caught the boat and the bus back to our resort, we found a different kind of medicine at the hotel's gift shop, I took some and fell asleep. I woke up to the sound of my family discussing perusing the grounds of our resort and I hopped up and mumbled that I wanted to go along.

This was the first time we've stayed at Port Orleans Riverside and it was really enjoyable. The resort is themed after antebellum homes in Louisiana bayou country; our room was actually located in Alligator Bayou! There was a river running through the resort grounds and the lobby featured a side building that had a gigantic water wheel that was constantly in motion. After wandering just a bit and taking some pictures here and there, we decided to try our hand at a four person surry bike...

Let me tell you - a surry bike is no joke. It looks like fun (it was) and it looks like it will be easy (it wasn't) but there is a lot more work involved than you realize. We took it twice around the resort, which took about thirty minutes. We snapped some pictures as we went and it was only once we returned the bike that my Mom realized somewhere along the way her wallet had fallen out of her pocket!

We ended up splitting up and walking the surry bike trail back until we met in the middle - and we had not found the wallet. We had encountered a security guard and we shared what we were looking for with him...and shortly after we all met back up, he scooted over on his Segway to let us know that the wallet had been turned in at the office. *All the Praise Hands* Once this whole adventure was all said and done, a large chunk of the afternoon had passed and so we got freshened up (that Florida heat y'all) and hopped a bus...and then a monorail over to the Polynesian!

We decided to take part in something we've never done before and made our dinner plans for Wednesday night at the Polynesian, with the Spirit of Aloha dinner show. I love pretty much everything about the Polynesian resort; it reminds me so much of my trip to Hawaii after high school, and so I was more than pleased to be going to my second luau.

We were given lei and pointed to a pathway that wound through thick vegetation to the luau pavilion, tucked near the beach at the Polynesian. Our all you can eat dinner (yum!) began with soba noodles, pineapple and salad; I tried the noodles and then contented myself with eating large quantities of fresh pineapple. Yum! Our meal had pulled pork, pork  and beef ribs, smoke chicken, jasmine rice and fresh vegetables - it was all absolutely delicious but I could have personally eaten mountains of the jasmine rice and pulled pork - my mouth is watering just thinking about it! And dessert - oh my! It was a pineapple mango cake topped with whipped frosting a chocolate sprinkles. Everything was delicious!

The luau show that began during the meal was excellent - it started with a more simplified story line that followed a hula teacher who was throwing a going away party for one of her students. That portion of the show contained some singing and dancing, but after dinner the show transitioned to a more traditional luau with dances that represented all of the islands that make up the Polynesian islands. The grand finale was a performance of the fire knife dance - and while it was hard to take pictures, I did manage to capture a pretty good video!

I know with certainty what part I would not be signing up for in a luau. No thank you! It was quite impressive though! We got an Uber back to our hotel (that's totally a thing at Disney, who knew?) and we were able to relax and peruse the gift shop before getting in an early night!